Indian rescue workers yesterday resumed the gruesome search for victims of a train wreck blamed on Maoist saboteurs, with fears that the final death toll could exceed 150.
More than 30 hours after a Mumbai-bound high-speed passenger train from Kolkata careened off the tracks in a remote part of West Bengal, emergency teams were still trying to cut their way into mangled compartments.
“The death toll now is 115 with the recovery of more bodies from the worst affected carriage number five,” West Bengal police inspector general Surajit Kar Purakayastha said.
“But that’s going to rise as two of the carriages that crashed into the freight train have yet to be fully searched,” he said.
West Bengal’s civil defense minister, Srikumar Mukherjee, said as many as 70 passengers were still missing.
It was the deadliest Maoist attack in recent memory and is likely to ramp up pressure on the government which has already been severely criticized for its handling of the left-wing insurgency.
The precise cause of the derailment in the early hours of Friday morning was still unclear.
Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee said Maoists had blown up the track with explosives, while police pointed to evidence that a section of rail had been manually removed.
Senior police officials on Friday had laid the blame squarely at the feet of the rebels, saying several Maoist leaflets had been left at the site of the disaster.
However, Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai suggested there was still room for inquiry.
“It’s likely to be them [Maoists]. There is no one else in the area. But we are still checking,” Pillai said.
The incident occurred at around 1:30am in West Midnapore — a Maoist stronghold around 135km west of Kolkata.
The Indian Railways Board responded by canceling nighttime services in a number of Maoist-affected areas until further notice.
Thirteen carriages, most of them packed with sleeping passengers, jumped the tracks and most of the casualties were in four that collided with an oncoming goods train.
More than 200 people were injured, some of them critically.
“Terrorists, Not Maoists,” thundered the Times of India in a front-page headline that reflected the general media mood that the left-wing extremists had forfeited their claim to be the champions of India’s dispossessed.
The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of landless tribespeople and farmers left behind by India’s rapid economic expansion.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not